An Update of ASA’s Carcass Merit Program 

The American Simmental Association and its members understand that product traits such as marbling, lean yield and even tenderness will play an increasing role in profitability for all segments of the beef business. In response to this need for more information, nearly four years ago, the ASA and its members embarked on an ambitious research program to position itself as an industry leader in both understanding and improving these end product traits.

 The History

       We have known for years that traditional carcass traits such as cutability and marbling have a large genetic component; therefore, identifying superior genetics for these traits and selection for their improvement can have important long-term impact. The ASA, in cooperation with more than 25 influential commercial herds in 11 states, has been very active evaluating sires for carcass trait genetics by breeding large groups of females to the most influential Simmental, Simbrah and other breeds sires and collecting product data on the resulting progeny. Of the top 100 sires reported in the ASA fall sire summary, 70 have been enrolled in this program.

      By using large, planned contemporary groups with known reference sires and with the ASA’s involvement in overseeing these projects, we believe this information to be the most accurate and highest quality data available in the beef industry. This information is then used in the calculation of our carcass trait EPDs. By the end of this spring’s breeding season over 180 Simmental, 25 Simbrah, 45 Angus, 25 Red Angus and several Braunvieh, Charolais and Gelbvieh bulls will have been enrolled in this program with nearly 300 bulls in total in some stage of the testing process.

     These projects reflect a huge investment of time and dollars on the part of owners, semen companies and others to the testing and improvement of carcass traits. Remember that once females are mated it is often more than two years before carcass data is available and with the potential for lost information, the wait can be even longer. Every time that a quality contemporary group is harvested and carcass data is entered into our database, information and potential genetic improvement is the reward for all of the participants in the system. Partners, besides the bull owners and the ASA, include commercial herds, feedlots, buyers, packers, carcass data collectors and universities. With all of the potential cooperators in each test, the promotional value of this program is great but so is the potential for lost identification. What other commercial program requires the commitment of so many segments of the beef industry?

The Data

       Data collected on Simmental sired carcasses has been encouraging. So far this program has collected nearly 3000 carcass records on Simmental sired calves with the following results:

Avg. Carcass Weight........774 lbs.

Avg. Fat Thickness.............40 in.

Avg. Rib Eye Area.......13.2 sq. in.

Avg. Yield Grade.................... 2.6

Avg. Percent Choice..............69%

      Just as importantly discounts for Standard carcasses have run less than 1% with a 2% rate of weight discounts. It is interesting to note that the Simmental sired calves have averaged over 2.7% yield grade 4 and poorer carcasses when measured by trained technicians, and yet under the current system of grading these carcasses are often stamped as YG 3’s by USDA graders and are rarely discounted. Other breeds tested account for more than twice that percentage of measured YG 4’s. These data represent cattle fed at 26 feed yards in 10 states and harvested at more than 12 major packing plants.

       Also, unlike some promotional data that is reported this represents only the known, sire identified calves and is a summary of all calves harvested and used in the genetic evaluation.

       It is important to realize however that within these contemporaries, the differences in sire groups can be great. Often differences as large as 40 % choice carcasses or a full yield grade can be seen between sire group averages. The good news about this variation is that it provides the potential for rapid genetic improvement in the carcass traits most important to your goals. Certainly, we expect the high ranking sires for specific traits to rank high in other contemporary groupings, but breed makeup of cow herds can greatly affect the carcass trait group averages between herds.

The Implications

Approximately 80% of the Simmental data collected in this program has been produced using british breed commercial cows with Angus being the primary compliment. In fact, several (nearly 30%) high value slaughter groups with this 50% Simmental, 50% Angus genetic profile have broken the 70% choice, 70% yield grade 1 & 2 barrier with ease, while producing less than 1% of carcasses receiving grid discounts. With high and variable choice-select spreads and the $20/cwt. discounts given to Standards, yield grade 4’s and out-weight carcasses these cattle hit most grid pricing schemes dead center. These cattle also gave important flexibility for profit last February when the Yield Grade 1 premium on some grids was more than three times the premium for choice. By feeding cattle to an average of only .28 in. fat thickness, we still had no standards and could approach 90% yield grades 1 and 2. Mixed grid signals like these and specific alliance participation will ask producers to hit several different end targets to maximize profitability. For example, some producers will be asked to produce a high marbling, acceptably lean product while others will be paid for a tender, lean, lower marbling product. It is crucial therefore to provide individual EPDs for specific traits that can help either group move toward their end product targets.

What About Tenderness

Tenderness has been a more illusive quality target and yet we know many consumers consider it the most important product trait. We also know that tenderness has an important genetic component and large differences may exist between sires and genetic lines. The ASA and other breed associations have embarked on a large-scale tenderness project in cooperation with NCBA and others, to evaluate those differences and validate DNA markers that might indicate genetics for superior tenderness. Included in this project is the shearing of over 1000 steaks per breed. In our case, this represents 20 each of the most important Simmental and Simbrah sires. In addition to the NCBA project, the ASA progeny carcass testing program has provided an additional 1500 steaks for shear force evaluation. These samples represent a total of over 110 sires, including sample sires of other breeds, to build the first EPD’s for tenderness available anywhere in the world. Be watching for the new Tenderness EPD evaluation this fall!

Multi-Breed Calving Ease and Other Data

Another beneficial product of the carcass program has been the collection of thousands of commercial progeny records for weights and calving ease traits. Many of the herds we work with provide us with every birth, weaning and yearling weight observations along with calving ease scores for their cowherds. These large contemporary groups add significant and unbiased data to our genetic evaluation each turn. Last year, records on more than 2500 of these calves was included in the EPD evaluation with many contemporary groups in excess of 100 steer or heifer calves. One of the largest of these commercial data sources has come from our planned heifer calving projects in Montana commercial herds. Of the approximately 7000 heifers mated for the carcass testing program, over 4500 have been bred in herds with the goal of collecting every calving ease score and birth weight possible. This project, now in its 4th year has resulted in one of the largest multi-breed calving ease data bases ever collected. Each spring, with help from the ASA, college interns from Montana State assist in the calving and data collection at these large commercial ranches to enhance their practical college experience and provide us with an awesome calving data set. Some of these students will calve more heifers in 4 days than many of us might experience in 20 years. These data provide us the information that we need to make our EPD’s for calving ease multi-breed and give us benchmarks and proof of the practicality of using Sim-genetics on commercial heifers.

 The Future

The need for high quality genetic information that impacts profitability is growing in this industry at an incredible pace. Structured sire testing programs provide large amounts high quality data for important traits that are often diffi- cult to collect or measure. With the increasing need for these kinds of information, the strong continued support of Simmental breeders, and an increasing interest on the part of other breeds for this service, expansion of this program and its services appears certain. This business will demand that all genetic providers show proof of end product value and ask for continued progress. After four years of work, we now have the information that it takes to answer these challenges and a program in place to promote long term improvement in ultimate value. For more information about these opportunities or other services provided by ASA please contact us at 406-587-4531 or visit our web site at www.simmgene.com.

Marty Ropp

Coordinator of Commercial Programs

American Simmental Association